Cravaack-Nolan in dead heat

With less than a month until election day, Republican incumbent Chip Cravaack and Democratic challenger Rick Nolan remain in a dead heat in the Eighth District Congressional race, according to the latest poll from SurveyUSA/KSTP.

Nolan leads 46 percent to Cravaack’s 45 percent, well within the more than 4 percent margin of error. The poll, of 578 registered and likely voters was conducted Oct. 7-9. Cravaack leads among men and independents, while Nolan has an advantage among women and voters over 50. Here’s the results.

Both candidates are also pulling in money from around the country, in one of the most hotly contested races in the country, the Star Tribune reports.

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Willmar Senior High School students got a first-hand look at justice Wednesday when the Minnesota Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that’s good for all young people to hear.

J.J.P. was tried on burglary and theft charges when he was a juvenile. His record was expunged in 2007, but records at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was not. That prevented the fireman and emergency medical technician from being granted a license to become a paramedic.

Some 500 Willmar students heard the hour-long arguments, part of a program to educate students about the state judicial system.“It is a very significant case,” the students were told by the emcee of the event, Chief Eighth District Judge Donald M. Spilseth, according to a West Central Tribune report. “It’s an authority question: Should the courts be able to expunge records from executive branch agencies.”

A summer trip to California for a Duluth man was supposed to be about honoring his mother, who had died earlier this year. But instead Scott Toso cleaned up on “The Price Is Right,” one of his mother’s favorite game shows.

Toso, a senior operating engineer in the University of Minnesota Duluth heating plant, won two cars and a trip to Australia (which he declines because of the tax penalty).

“Sydney was hard to pass up, but cars last a lot longer than six nights in Sydney,” Toso told the Duluth News Tribune of his new Ford Mustang and Honda Accord. The show, taped in June, aired Wednesday.